


A Knight in Black, White, and Technicolor

by YoAlexander



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Bartender!Adam, Bouncer!Caleb, College, Coworkers - Freeform, Damian is his own warning, M/M, Meet-Cute, Panic Attack, Past light kidnapping, Pining, They didn’t meet in highschool, mutual crush
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:42:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28972275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YoAlexander/pseuds/YoAlexander
Summary: Working at the club was just supposed to be a side gig for Adam while he worked through his last year of undergrad. Sure, he enjoyed staring at the cute bouncer who seemed to have more charisma than anyone Adam had ever met, but he knew nothing was ever going to happen there. He was too shy, and besides, why would they ever have a deeper conversation than passing coworker pleasantries? He definitely didn’t expect him to become his super hero.For Caleb, this job was a pause button. After college, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do with his life. Honestly, he didn’t feel ready to make those kinds of life altering decisions. Hence, working as a bouncer at a night club while he “saved for his masters.” He definitely didn’t expect to meet the man who would restart his life.
Relationships: Adam Hayes/Caleb Michaels, Frankie Meeks/Caitlin Park
Kudos: 10





	A Knight in Black, White, and Technicolor

**Author's Note:**

> Things to know about this AU:   
> Caleb and Adam did not meet in Highschool, Adam was successfully kidnapped by Damian to be used as leverage against Wadsworth but was rescued, and Adam took a mental health year before starting college, which is why he’s in his senior year while Caleb is freshly graduated.

Usually, Adam liked to read on his way to work. Yeah yeah, he had been lectured many times as a kid about the dangers of walking around with your nose stuck in a book, but after all these years? He had the act down pact. See, all he had to do was make sure the book was at just the right level so he could see over the cover with his periphery so he didn’t run into anyone. Besides, he looked up after every paragraph to make sure he was still aware of his surroundings, so it’s not like it was that big of a deal. Besides, it’s senior year. He barely had enough time to do his regular homework, let alone finish  _ all _ the books he wanted to use in his honors thesis. 

His advisor had told him to pare down the list since it was already over the required source limit by a good margin, but what his advisor didn;t understand is that he had chosen each of these books for a reason. If he left one of them out then his entire argument would be weaker and weaker until it was just completely unraveling into an unintelligible mess. 

Ok. He could admit that was a little extreme. He was getting bat6ter at not doing that. But, come on! It was raining, which meant he couldn’t read while he walked, which meant he would be at least twenty pages behind schedule. Maybe if he ran fast enough he would be able to sit down in the break room and try to catch up before his shift started. Maybe. 

Anyways, it was pretty safe to say that his mood had been pretty soured already before he even reached the doors of the dim establishment where he would be spending his evening. He splashed his way to the back entrance and let himself in. Of course, the air conditioning was already blasting in expectation of the many sweaty bodies that would be filling it in less than an hour. Mixed with the rain damp clothes, this was shaping up to be one the worst shifts this month. And with Steven already glaring at him from the corner, he didn’t even have the opportunity to put in his headphones and listen to some music to help calm his nerves. Literally the only redeeming factor of the night was that the hot bouncer was working tonight too. 

Adam quickly shed his jacket and backpack, carefully hanging them on the provided hooks to dry throughout his shift, and made his way out the public areas of the club. Steven was already waiting, pushing a spray bottle into his chest.

“Look alive, Hayes, you’re already behind schedule and you’re not getting any extra tips for having a sticky bar. And don’t forget to check the expiration dates  _ before _ opening this time. Serving that expired shit to customers is a serious liability to the company.” The man huffed away as if he could actually hear the insults running through Adam’s head. Seriously, it wasn’t like they cleaned every night when the club closed. And he had only served expired food  _ once _ , and guess who had been obn prepping duty that day, Steven! Not all of us can be promoted to shift manager by brushing every mistake off onto others to clean up. Some of us are actually adults and can take responsibility for our actions. 

Adam was pulled out of his inner rant by a strong hand landing on his shoulder. He looked up into dark, beautiful eyes, wonderfully kind and gently concerned brows scrunched in the cutest way. 

“Hey, you ok, dude?” Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome asked.

“Huh?” Adam replied intellectually. 

“You, uh, you’ve been staring at the spray bottle awfully intently. It didn’t insult your mother, did it?”

“What? Oh, no!” He slowly fought to get his tongue under control once again. “I-I’m fine.Just, lost in thought, you know?”

Caleb, Adam knew the guys name and really had to stop referring to him with too familiar nicknames in his head if he ever wanted to have a sensible conversation with him, patted his shoulder with a grin and a cute laugh. Like, a really cute little laugh. “Yeah, I get it. One of those nights. Hopefully it gets better, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Adam replied, watching him walk away. 

He turned to the bar, spraying it and idly wiping it down in the sprays wake. Two marks towards an awful night and one night towards a good one. Maybe there was still hope for the night to be saved yet. 

* * *

Remember when Adam thought tonight was still salvageable? Yeah. No. Not happening. Sure, things had been going alright, normal. And then, of course, there had been a fight. Not just an argument or a few hits then the people were broken apart and things diffused, no. A full on, explosive, violent  _ fight _ . A loud fight. A big fight. 

He didn’t know how it had started, only that it was somewhere a few seats down the bar from where he was serving some girls a drink they had ordered once from this bar in New York and just really wanted to try again - it had been called a flamethrower. Well, he definitely felt burned. 

He wasn’t at the bar anymore. He had recognized the onset of the panic attack this time. He had barely made it inside the break room before his knees gave out. Lucky for him that the room was right behind the bar. Now he just sat there, his breath coming too fast and his heart feeling like it was trying to climb up and out of his throat, not caring if it choked him in the process. He was rocking gently, arms clasped tightly around himself, but he could tell you for the life of him what the pressure felt like. All he knew was that the memories were pushing and pushing and pushing, threatening to take over every last shred of his sanity. 

He heard that deep voice shouting. Shouting into the phone, shouting at him, shouting at the door, just shouting and covering everything with his stifling eling voice. It was just so  _ powerful _ . It paralyzed him and filled him with absolute terror. He knew, logically, that beyond a few surface bruises he hadn’t been hurt at all. But. But that didn’t stop him from remembering how he thought his heart would actually stop beating that first time  _ he _ had hung up the phone and looked at Adam with absolute fury. It felt like the guy had wanted to kill him. Had wanted him to suffer. And Adam still didn’t know why. It had been more than four years and he still didn’t know why he was taken. He was just Adam. Just useless, stupid Adam who can’t even string together two logical thoughts to save his own life. 

For example, logically, he knew that he was at work. He was in a building with probably 200 other people, at least. He was sitting on the disgusting floor of the break room and even now he should be able to hear the pounding music from the other side of the wall. But, instead, he only saw the blank walls of that motel room swimming before his eyes. Felt the crushing loneliness of knowing that no one had entered the room since he had left early that morning, not knowing if he was actually going to return or not. If he didn’t then Adam would just waste away here, tired and afraid and lonely. He already felt like there were roots growing out of his body and keeping him trapped on the bed in the hunched fetal position. He was just going to decompose until there wasn’t any trace of Adam Hayes left in the world. And he wasn’t even outside where his decomposing bones could at least fertilize the ground. He was just trapped here, in the room, in this bed, in this position. And he had convinced himself that he was here because he deserved to be. He wasn’t even worth benign fertilizer. I mean, what good had he ever brought to the table anyways? The man, Damien, had just known, somehow, how useless Adam was and decided to make the world a little better by disposing of him. 

He had worked so hard with so many therapists to work past these thoughts and memories. But just like that, he was thrust back into that same destructive mindset. It sapped all of the strength he had been building for the last few years. It left him a shaky, collapsing mess. And he couldn;t pull himself out of it. 

And that’s when everything changed.

Through the fog, he felt someone sit down next to him, someone large and warm. But Damien had never sat next to him. He had loomed, a constant threat. He would never lower himself  _ next _ to Adam. But he still couldn't bring himself to move enough to even look to see who it was. 

Instead, he felt something touch his ear. He jerked in surprise, hunching a little further into himself. He thought he could hear someone saying something, but he couldn’t tell. All he could hear clearly was the screaming. 

But, no. There was something else now too, something even more familiar than the loud voices. It was something harsh yet soft. It  _ flowed _ . It flowed over him. It flowed into him. Like, a cleansing river. It felt like being hit with a splash of cold water while washing his face in the morning - not washing everything away but giving him a sensation to hang onto. Something concrete and here and now and not just a memory. He gripped it with all of his concentration, trying to focus on it instead of the shouting. 

“In restless dreams I walked alone, narrow streets of cobblestone, ‘neath the halo of a street lamp…”

It was  _ The Sound of Silence _ by Disturbed.

It...was one of his favorite songs. He could remember finding the CD in a thrift store and using his saved allowance to get it, just for the cool cover art. He could remember sitting in his room, back up against his bookshelf and CD player, volume turned down almost to silent, sitting beside him. He remembered his awe at the singer’s talent. He remembered immediately rewinding the song so he could actually listen to the lyrics this time. He remembered rewinding it over and over until he had it memorized. He remembered playing it again and again when he just needed to calm down, to get out of his own head. 

And now it was playing here.

Finally, he raised his head, shifting his eyes to the side. He would know that crop of neatly shaved hair from across the room, doused in shadows and flashing lights. He could lose himself in that gentle smile playing across his face, eyes closed peacefully and head resting against the wall. He had one hand propped up, holding the earbud near, but not touching Adam’s ear. It was so thoughtful and  _ nice.  _ If he had any more energy left he knew it would make him cry. It would probably still make him cry just... later. 

“Caleb?”

The man next to him cracked open one eye. “Hey, Adam.” He paused, taking in Adam’s state, his hunched form, pale face, his still shaking form. “How’s it going?”

Adam laughed. It was just so stupid, how casual it was. Like, Caleb had run into him collecting a refill, not having a panic attack on the floor. “Oh, you know. Just one of those nights.” And Caleb smiled. Not that soft, relaxed thing that had been stretched across his face earlier, but a bright, joyful thing.

“Well, if you’re able to make a quip like that then you must be just fine.”

“Fine, is...one way of putting it I guess.” 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Adam’s first reaction was to say no. To tell him to forget it and pretend it had never happened. But, Caleb looked so relaxed, so open. He looked like a blank journal, just waiting for you to put down whatever you want, however much or however little as you wanted. He was now used to therapists staring at him expectantly, knowing that he would eventually answer no matter how many times they insisted it was his decision. But it didn’t feel like that with Caleb. Honestly, it made him  _ want _ to tell him. 

So, he did.

“It was...just, the shouting. I mean, I know that there’s always shouting here, the music is so loud people have to yell just to talk to the person next to him, so I’m used to people yelling their drink orders at me all night. And, yeah, fights have happened before with shouting, but this was just so close. And, I guess that I can’t usually hear things clearly. It’s always covered at least a little bit by the music. This is the first time it was so close to me. And, and, the glass. The glass shattering.” 

He paused, breathing like Dr. Keip had taught him. “Something happened a few years ago. And, I’m better now. It was just...unexpected. And a lot. It was just a lot all at once. I’ve been getting better, a lot better. But, I just kind of, lost myself there for a bit, I guess. Sorry for, uh, dumping all this on you, you really don’t have to worry about it-”

“Adam, don’t worry about it.” Caleb hadn’t looked away, hadn’t wavered, just sat there being a calming presence throughout the emotional rollercoaster. “That sounds really rough, and you shouldn’t feel guilty for the reactions you’re going to have to it.”

“Yeah, but it was just so stupid-”

“There’s nothing stupid about it, Adam. You can’t control your triggers and you can’t control your environment either. But you got yourself away, to somewhere safe, which is honestly pretty impressive.” All Adam could do was stare. No one had ever reacted to his panic attacks like this before. “You’re shaking, are you cold?” 

He shrugged, “I guess a little.” Before he had even finished, Caleb was already shrugging out of his jacket, reaching over to drape it around Adam’s shoulders. 

“Sorry, I know it’s pretty thin, uniforms, ya know, but it should help a little.” 

“Thanks.” He clutched at the lapels, feeling the fabric stretch across back and shoulders, adding just a little bit of pressure that he really really liked. “You know, you’re really good at this.”

Caleb laughed. “I’m just glad that being a psych major wasn’t a complete waste of time.” His smile was infectious.

“Definitely not. You’re great. At this! I mean you’re great at this.”

“Thanks.” They sat in peaceful silence for a few more moments, the song restarting in the background. “So, how’re you feeling now? Do you need me to go distract Steven so you can leave early?”

Adam groaned. “Oh god, can you imagine the earful I’d get? I swear he thinks we serve clients more important than a bunch of drunk people who won’t even remember us tomorrow.” That got another laugh out of Caleb. 

“You’re not wrong there! When I first started here I thought he was just someone who had arrived super early cause someone had finally convinced him to try to relax. Like, I know a lot of stressed and really uptight people, but he’s just on another level. Seriously, though, anything you need?”

“No, no, you’ve been such a big help already. I think that I’m okay to finish this shift, really.”

“You sure? I mean, I don’t think you’re lying or anything, I just want to make sure you’re not just saying what you think you should say.”

“No, no, yeah. I’m actually feeling a lot better now.”

Caleb nodded. “Ok, well, I’ll be right across the room if you need anything else, yeah?”

“Yeah, definitely!”

Caleb stood up, fussing with his phone and tucking the headphones back into his pocket. He extended a hand to Adam, helping him up. And, like, Adam knew that Caleb was strong. He was a bouncer! He had watched him break up fight after fight before. But actually feeling his hand close around his own? Feeling that strength lift him firmly yet gently off the floor? If Adam wasn’t gone before he was definitely head over heels now. 


End file.
